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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nonamazing" data-source="post: 3290827" data-attributes="member: 12118">"Please be careful, Instructor Sylara.  Sol is not the true cause of this disaster.  I believe he is merely being used, much like these poor creatures here on the landing area.  I know that you will do your best to save him."  Sylara nods as he listens to Atharias' response.  He then kneels and lifts Sol onto his back, securning the child with some heavy bands torn from his robes.  The force drain coming off of Sol gnaws away at Sylara's concentration, but he shakes it off and heads into the corridor.After a bit of trial and error, Zeth discovers that if he stays about ten meters away from Sol, his strength recovers enough for him to walk and climb on his own.  The tiny Rodian watches as Sylara tears open a hole in the side of the deck.  "I follow you, yes?", Zeth asks timidly.  "We climb?"After speaking briefly with Tyren, Sylara begins to climb up the access ladder, only to find that Sol's close presence prevents him from tapping into the Force.  Relying on nothing other than his own strength, Sylara begins hauling himself up the ladder.  Zeth waits a few moments, and then follows at a distance.A grey fungus lines the walls of the tube, but it dies, turns black, and flakes away as Sol comes near.[SBLOCK=OOC (Sylara)]Unfortunately, due to Sol's Force Drain, Sylara is unable to use Force powers or spend Force points while carrying him.  Fortunately, the ladder is easy to climb (only DC 10; he would have made the check even without the Force Point he spent) and Sol's tiny body doesn't weigh very much (the weight is within Sylara's normal carrying limits).Sylara still has that Force Point, it doesn't count as having been spent or wasted--it just didn't have any effect.Oh, I'm going to change continuity slightly, if you don't mind, and assume that Sylara opened the access tube rather than the elevator shaft.  This allows it to make more sense in light of   Tyren's post, and brings more of the characters into one location, which is good.  Hopefully this minor change is okay with everybody.[/SBLOCK]* * *Verena blushes.  "Thank you, Master," she says, her head bowed.  "What do I think of all this?  Well, you said it yourself, Master: who would attack the Academy while Atharias was still here?  Unless, of course, they're not really after the Academy."Verena is quiet for a moment, carefully searching along the walls for any sort of exit.  Eventually, she continues: "I mean, look around," she says, gesturing to the mysterious crates.  "Master Atharias obviously has some secrets--what if he also has some enemies?"As Tersh mulls over these thoughts, Verena continues to search the far side of the room.  A few moments later, she calls out in surprise.  "Master, over here!"  Behind one of the crates, Verena has discovered a simple round pressure hatch.  The heavy wheel that opens the hatch doesn't look as though it has been touched in decades.  A single word in Basic is scribed on the hatch: 'Observation'.[SBLOCK=OOC (Tersh)]Tersh was able to hear Nor's comments clearly.  Communication has now been fully restored.[/SBLOCK]* * *Nor flicks off the communicator and begins blasting squid, but Atharias seems worried.  "A black crystal?  In the droid?"  Atharias looks nervously over at Timone and sighs.  "Bri told me that he had modified the droid, but I reflexively thought it a harmless prank and asked no further questions.  And when your students were working on Timone, Instructor Nor, I ignored them, believing nothing useful could come from it."Atharias points at the droid.  "Our foe knows me all too well, Nor.  He has hidden his weapon right here, where my own prejudice kept me blind to it."  Atharias shakes his head, obviously confused.  "But how did Bri get ahold of one of those?  Who gave it to him?"* * *"I'll do my best, Master."  Treela bows as Tolark leaps into the access hatch.  Jett and Hale huddle close to Treela, shivering in the cold rain and flinching every time another roar of thunder cracks across the sky, or whenever Nor's quadlasers explode another squid creature off in the distance.  Jilian readies her lightsaber and stands a few paces away, trying to retain her composure.As Tolark heads down the tube, he notices that the grey ooze is growing incredibly fast, the slimy patches literally expanding before his very eyes.  No obvious food source is sustaining them--they don't seem to be eating away at the walls or absorbing any of the rainwater that falls from the open hatch above.  But they are very good at getting into cracks and fouling up hinges: the hatch to deck two and the medical area is stuck fast.A few dim emergency lights provide feeble illumination in the access tube.  In their glow, Tolark can see Sylara climbing upwards from deck seven.* * *Bri seems startled and confused at first.  "Master Atharias said I wasn't going to be in trouble..."  But Tyren's calming words have a positive effect on the boy, and he soon opens up.  "Well, about a week ago, I was talking to everybody about how Master Atharias doesn't like droids, and how I wanted to show him--I wanted to show everybody--that droids are actually, you know, good.  And somebody said something about how none of the instructors have any trouble using lightsabers, and those are machines."Bri lowers his voice, almost whispering.  "But lightsabers are special, aren't they?  They kind of respond to the Force a little bit, right?  And somebody said, 'what makes them do that?'  And I thought, 'it's the crystal, isn't it?'""I didn't know where to get a crystal, so I guess I kind of gave up. Then Sol came to me this morning and said he had one.  He gave it to me and  he said maybe I could surprise everybody.  But just as soon as I linked it to Timone's sensors, he went nuts and ran down here.  That's when I tried to tell Master Atharias what was going on, and everything started getting weird..."* * *Nor's visual examination of the academy's landing area reveals nothing obvious.  The turbines that help keep the academy afloat, modified from hovercraft engines, are located on the bottom of the landing pad, out of the War Pig's field of view.  A quick slice into the Academy's central computer, however, reveals some disturbing news: the turbines are acting at only 70% of full capacity, and whatever is causing the malfunction seems to be getting worse.  As Nor watches, the engines' capacity slowly continues to drop, to 69%, then to 68%.</blockquote>

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